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| 12/03/07 | | Future stories |
A simple way to help people develop stories of how their organisation might operate in the future is to ask them to consider specific triggering events then explain what happened. It’s important the triggering event is specific yet representative.
For example, a triggering event might be Ron Wilson suddenly resigning from the investments section to join a competitor. The group might decide to tell the story of what happened from the point of resignation or sometime before that.
Another approach is to find examples of how you would like your organisation to operate from within your organisation or in other similar organisations. As William Gibson says, “The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed.”
So why are we interested in future stories? They help an organisation paint a memorable vision of what they would like to achieve and rooting it in specific examples that everyone can understand, recollect and retell. The provide a strategic intent for the organisation without being prescriptive.
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Comments
At a recent event we ran we asked the delegates to walk with us to the "future room". Having pictured and then drawn/written/explained what they "saw" in the future we walked them back to the present. The next session looked at the "current State". Finally we got them to "Go Back to the Future" in small steps plotting and describing how they would get there.
The result was a highly interactive and fun session. The delegates made quite a mess between the present and the future - never seen so much paper, post-its and pictures! Bit more like reality than other techniques. Now we have to test if the journey is embedded in their consciousness!
Posted by: Scott McArthur at March 12, 2007 8:46 AM
Thanks for sharing this experience Scott. An innovative approach. How are you going to test whether "the journey is embedded in their consciousness?"
Posted by: Shawn Callahan at March 12, 2007 9:02 AM
Good question. Met with the client group's management team today to induct them for their event next week. Good sign was that they were using some of the language that the top team had been through with us last week. I guess the proof of what I like to call "stickiness" will emerge over the next few months. One of the sticky tools is on my blog. Will keep you posted. Any other ideas?
Posted by: Scott McArthur at March 13, 2007 8:44 AM